PROBLEMS LEFT BY WAR

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6442, 5 November 1947, Page 6

PROBLEMS LEFT BY WAR

CIVILISATION IN EUROPE “LONG TIME BEFORE IT WILL BE RESTORED” “It is not the material destruction caused by war that is the worst problem in Europe; it is the moral and intellectual destruction; civilisation in Europe is just ticking over—no more; another war would be the end of European civilisation based on Christian principles,” said Mr A. J. Campbell, speaking at a meeting of the Christchurch Cultural Society. Mr Campbell recently returned to Christchurch from overseas where he travelled extensively in England, Scotland and Wales, stayed in the Channel Islands, and visited European countries.

Europe, he thought, required a long period of peace so that civilisation may be restored. The Christian religion had received a shattering blow, and men’s attitude towards their fellow-men and towards their work, their standards of honesty and decency had undergone a change. This was the outcome of the resistance movement, in which these principles were disregarded. In the resistance movement it was patriotic to do as little work as possible, to spoil machinery, to produce shoddy goods, to steal, and to disobey the law. Boys and girls during the most formative periods of their lives were trained to do all these things to hinder the progress of the enemy. They could not be expected to change completely in a few weeks.

Then the type of man or woman who led the resistance movement was not the type to find the best ways of carrying out reconstruction. The former leaders found themselves displaced by those who, they considered, had been passive and comfortable during the war and this caused dissension and bitterness where unity was needed.

Mr Campbell touched briefly on the major problem of orphans, especially in south-eastern Eurbpe, and on the deplorable state of Germany, now one huge slum. Help for Germany, he felt, would not be forthcoming from the neighbouring countries. The bitterness and hatred bred in boundary states by the treatment they received during the war were so terrible that they would not do anything to help the Germans. Tolerance, reason and freedom of expression were not now to be found in Holland, France, or Belgium, and Mr Campbell felt it would be a long time before freedom would, as it was known in New Zealand, be enjoyed in these countries. In Germany intellectual destruction had been going on for years before the outbreak of war when free-dom-loving teachers were dismissed by Hitler. New schools and universities had been destroyed, there was no one to take the place of teachers who had gone to other countries, and there were no books. For the reconstruction of university life Germany was looking to England and America.